The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation is delighted to announce Oliver Beer as the winner of the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize 2015.

 

The Prize offers a unique opportunity for a British artist to gain exposure to Japan’s visual arts sector. Oliver is now invited to exhibit at the Aoyama | Meguro Gallery in Tokyo in Autumn 2015. In addition, he receives a participation fee of £5000 and a period of support and introduction to key individuals and organisations in the Japanese contemporary art world. 

 

He was shortlisted for the prize alongside Julie Brook and Mikhail Karikis. All three artists are currently showing their work in an exhibition at Daiwa Foundation Japan House, which runs until 17 July.

 

In this exhibition, Oliver Beer’s body of work interrogates the physical properties and sentimental values of material objects and cultural narratives. In doing so, he casts doubt on the objectivity of perception. On display are a series of powerfully illusory wall installations, in which ‘dissected’ objects, halved long-ways, are embedded in plaster plaques that lie flush with the wall. Among the series will be a work with coloured pencils, RGB (2014), which links directly to his main exhibit, a video entitled Reanimation – Snow White (2014). Never before shown in the UK, this film loop is a kaleidoscopic assemblage of over 500 images, hand-coloured by French school children, reimagining a sequence from Walt Disney’s 1938 cartoon. With a soundtrack pieced together from archived recordings of the film’s original songs, this film calls upon the universal mythology of Snow White to express the power of the collective imagination.

 

The Prize was presented at a private awards ceremony by the distinguished panel: Hideki Aoyama, Gallery Director, Aoyama | Meguro Gallery, Tokyo; Richard Deacon, artist; Mami Kataoka, Chief Curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Chris Orr RA, artist; and Jonathan Watkins, Director of Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.

 

This is the third Daiwa Foundation Art Prize, an award offered to British artists resident in the UK who have not previously exhibited in Japan. The two previous Prizes were awarded to Marcus Coates in 2009, who had a solo exhibition at Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, and to Haroon Mirza in 2012, whose solo show was held at SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, Tokyo.

 

An exhibition of work by the three shortlisted artists, Oliver Beer, Julie Brook and Mikhail Karikis will be on display at Daiwa Foundation Japan House from 12th June – 17th July 2015. 

 

From the Daiwa Foundation Press Release

 

http://www.dajf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Daiwa-Winner-Announcement-PR.pdf